Hi Chris,
and welcome to the ER community. A fellow countryman here and also a global citizen. You’re in good company here.
I read through your initial greeting and pulled out a few ideas and possible leads for community members you may wish to reach out to as you start your Masters course:
well, you’ve already spoken with @noemi and @alberto who are both great starting points for understanding how Edgeryders can work with local regions to create interesting a bottom up solutions to development issues.
I recoomend checking out the work in Futurespotters to see how we’ve worked with UNDP in areas like Georgia to engage entrepreneurial citizens in rethinking public spaces: Futuremakers #Rustavi @inge is your point of call to find out more about the work they’ve done in that area.[quote=“ChrisC, post:1, topic:8813”]
how open villages could become hubs for local democracy in post-war communities
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it may be worth you reaching out to both @thom_stewart and @gehan who are both doing their own things in Scotland and Ireland to help build new communities and rethink how decisions are made in these areas. Both organisations that they are part of are interesting beacons for how to solve local level issues in imaginative and bottom up ways. [quote=“ChrisC, post:1, topic:8813”]
I’m also planning on spending 2-3 weeks in Morocco in August before starting in September to perhaps get some inspiration before I have to go and live in a library for a year 
So, if anyone knows of any places where there are local NGOs, organisations, workshops, anything to do with local people, i’d be very interested in hearing about it!
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the best person to ask about this is @anique.yael, who is looking at how we can continue to work with interesting organisations in Morocco. It could also be worth asking @matthias and @hazem who coordinated and ran the OpenVillage prototype out there. I spent a wonderful month there earlier this year, and i’m very positive about continuing to engage with action in this part of the world. My understanding is that there are a number of interesting groups doing on the ground work in this area, but i don’t know exactly who.
Hope some of this helps.
Welcome to the party